My Anxiety Filled Mind

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See I am an awkward person by nature. It takes me a while before I can be open around some. Or just my goofy self really. I see this being a problem when it comes to dating. I mean I might really like this person and if I can’t even look them in the eye. I don’t see the relationship going far. (no pun intended) But I think there is someone out there for everyone. And hopefully, there is someone out there who will be able to out wait my awkwardness and see the real me. I guess we will have to see. Yet in the same breath, I am happy being single right now. I do not need a boyfriend to be happy I can make my own happiness and I have other people in my life that I enjoy being around. I am working on a career and future that I can be proud and happy with.

There is so much pressure on people finding a SO and I have always felt like I am failing someone by not having a boyfriend. When I think about it right now when the logical part of my brain is in control. I am not failing anyone. I have friends who enjoy me and a family who supports me.

Life is a tough thing to handle. And some people, unfortunately, are better at handling it. Everyone has their off days and that’s okay.We are allowed to be a little bruised and broken. Life throws things at us that we never expected, and we are just supposed to catch it in time and hope for the best. Sometimes we miss the catch and it hit us and we get hurt. We learn how to deal with the bruises and the brokenness that are the result of us missing the catch. But we need to keep trying to catch the ball as the little monster in our heads keep throwing them at us so we can hopefully learn how to catch a few.

*Disclamer Mild self harm*
I went on a road trip with a friend and her family. No big deal just a few hours away but for some reason, I was super anxious. Maybe we were going down to see her grandparents or this was my first big road trip with out any family but I noticed something about me. As my friend stopped talking to me cause she was anxious. We seem to flock together. I was super anxious and nervous and just wanted to go home. My mind had taken a wrong turn and was no longer in the good part of town. I was anxious about everything, from how her grandparents would see me right down to how I was breathing. I was a mess. I had felt like I had gone back to square one. Which I did not want to be back in the square. So I dug my nails into my hand. I was making a fist. So it wasn’t noticeable to anyone else but me, it hurt and it distracted me from my anxiety. Which was I needed at the time, and all that weekend if I felt anxious I would make a fist and the pain would distract me. And now I seem to do it all the time. Which isn’t good cause this is not a healthy way of coping but it sure is a quick fix.

I have this one really big worry. It seems kind of shallow when I think about it but yet, I still worry about it. I am scared that no one will ever love me with all my flaws and scares. When I tell that special someone how mind turns on itself and cause my body to react in the worst ways. I am scared that they will walk away. They will suddenly leave, and leave me crushed. I like to think I am a realist and I know that real life is not like the books I read. With the happy endings where the guy automatically accepts the girl, or vice versa. I know because I have seen people pull away from me when I say I have anxiety. Not necessarily in a bad way but they never really look at me the same. Some do, especially my friends who know what it is like to deal with internal war that goes on each day. I just don’t want that someone who I really care about to leave over that one thing. Over that monster that will never leave.

There is always some good in the bad. So I am trying to look at the little things that are good in the world. And this is one of them. So I saw this post a while back and I thought it was cute. But I just recently found it again and it got me thinking, that we should take this thing that we will have for all of our lives and turn it into something positive. With my anxiety it gives me the thoughts that no one likes me and of course panic attacks. That’s the bad side. The good side is that I have always been able to read people really well. Like if they are upset or don’t want to talk and just want to sit in silence for a while. This has helped me in a few situations. My mom says I am very accepting of people cause I bring home the “strays”. I just accept people for who they are because you don’t know what they have going on in their life, and a little kindness can go a long way. I also know what it feels like to be completely alone and I don’t think anyone should go through that alone so I will listen if they need someone to vent to. Which that has also got me into some odd situations, which kind of freaked me out but it worked out in the end. I could keep going and list so many good qualities people who I know who have anxiety have but that would take forever. The main point of this is that anxiety is the bad angel sitting on your shoulder that you didn’t ask for and you are stuck with it for the rest of your life. It might take awhile, it took me over, three years to come to terms with it and then another two to openly talk about it and see the positive in it. One of the reasons why I started this blog is to help people and let people see that anxiety sucks. A lot. But it doesn’t have to rule your life.

So I have had anxiety for a long time but it wasn’t until last year that I started to openly talk about it. I mean my immediate family knew but lots of my extended family doesn’t know that I have struggled with my mental health. Which I found strange because I thought it was written all over my face, in my body language, in everything I did. But if anyone noticed they never said anything. Which bring up two points in my mind that I find interesting. First is that people do not notice as much as you think they do.People have their own struggles going on or they just don’t care. This isn’t a bad thing it gives me a bit a peace at times is that people don’t really notice that weird thing you just did or anything else that anxiety is trying to make you worried about. The second point is if people did notice something was wrong they didn’t want to ask me about it. At the time I didn’t want to talk about it. But people are so scared of offending other or afraid of being uncomfortable, that they never ask what’s wrong. Maybe that’s why so many people fall through the cracks. We need to make people uncomfortable sometimes to get to the root of the problem. I think that we need to talk about mental health. If we, as a society, do not talk about it, it will never be fixed. We need to start conversations so more people can understand and in turn, more people can help. We can help each other. There are things out there that are starting conversations like Bell let’s talk day and tv shows and movies. But I think we need more so people do not feel so alone when they are hurting the inside and other people do not think that these people who are hurting are hard to understand. And maybe people won’t fall through the cracks.

I never thought I was different until I just entered high school and I told my best friend at the time something small that I was anxious about. I don’t even remember what it was. But she gave me the weirdest look. “Like are you crazy” kind of look. So then I realized that not everyone thought the same way I did. And not in a good way. Most people didn’t worry about what people thought of their clothes or hair or what they said 20 minutes ago to the point they didn’t want to go to school. So I just didn’t talk about it. I just bottled it up… probably not a good idea in hindsight. Yet it wasn’t till that next year when I spoke about to again but to my mom. I couldn’t sit still so she asked me what my problem was. And I just blurted out what I was anxious about at the time. She also gave me a strange look so I panicked and told her to forget about it. But she didn’t because well she is my mom. She would just talk things out with me, gave me the rational reasons when my brain was taken over by the irrational reasoning of anxiety. It helped for a bit, she didn’t make me go to therapy until I had a huge panic attack. But I didn’t want to go to therapy cause then there was something wrong with me. I, like everyone else, didn’t want there to be something wrong with me. But I still went cause at times I thought I was crazy. Therapy did help, it helped so much. My therapist at the time asked if this was how I was feeling and she described exactly how I was feeling. Once she told me that it was completely normal for people who have anxiety to feel that way, I felt a lot better and that maybe I could handle my anxiety.
Don’t be afraid to get help. It will do you so much good. And know that you are not alone.